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Amy listened with attention. Her eyes protruded. She tapped her foot upon the floor.

"Yes, but you're not sensual," she said. "You're not an artist. Experience is a thing every artist must have. Not a humdrum marriage, and children, and washing books ... I must have experience—to do great work...."

Patricia's eyes flew to the canvas, now covered, which stood upon the easel.

"But ..." she began.

"You drive me perfectly mad!" cried Amy, suddenly beside herself with impatience. "You ask questions. You're like a child. You don't know what torment is. You don't know what it is to be bothered the whole time with all this ... never to get away from it."

"It can't be very healthy," said Patricia. Amy showed her teeth in an angry smile. She did not answer for several minutes, during which her face became set in an expression of discontented egotism.

"Sometimes I think I'll marry Jack just to find out what marriage is like," she said at last. "I could always leave him and go off on my own."

"Poor Jack!" thought Patricia. She said aloud: "He wouldn't like that."